Burnley Grammar School

Hello Yee! You can actually post a picture here but you have to host the picture on another site. I would love to see how P.E is done in Taiwan.

First timer on here, looked on with interest for a few days over this and other comments.

Confession time I suppose. Between the ages of 11 and 15 the school I went to had some teachers who were always keen for boys PE to be done without our tops on, leaving us bare-chested. At a guess I'd say between those ages anything from about a third of the time to almost half we took PE was like it, dependent also on which teacher took us. We had two 70 minute PE lessons each week, one in, one out.

I was one of those kind of boys who found such a requirement extremely difficult, especially at the beginning. Outright scary infact the first few times I had to do it. I would try desperately to think of a way to subvert my teachers demands and be able to keep my top on, but none was successful. Just because the other 20 or 30 boys were the same didn't make me feel any better about it, infact worse. I convinced myself I was too thin with puny arms and body that was less than it should be for my age. Somebody actually made a direct comment to me about something which made my own mind keep on telling me my body was a certain way and didn't compare well next to others. I just felt that I was one of those boys whose body simply didn't need to be out there on view. It was in my mind rather than real I can admit to that.

I began skiving off a run of PE lessons, 5 in a row and went and sat in the toilets for an hour, and nobody checked them to see if I was there. Eventually that got me hauled in front of my headmaster in his office on a one to one chat about what was going on. He was a reasonable head. I explained a couple of points, one about one of my PE teachers, stuff about my preferences in sports, likes and dislikes. When I brought up my dislike of doing PE with no top in a lot of PE lessons he slouched back in his chair, chuckled and said - is that all this is about? I'd been intending to try my luck and mention showering too but with his reaction to the no PE shirt thing I didn't dare carry on due to embarrassment and knowing I was getting nowhere with him. It was all brushed aside like I was a silly boy and I was told to promise no more skiving, having admitted hiding in the toilets, and then had to apologise to my PE teacher who was asked in. And that was that. I felt like I'd been ridiculed for a legitimate concern. It was really disappointing because he was a reasonable head who did care about our welfare, later in school he dealt with me over something else to do with careers advice and was rather good and gave me time in his office, in a school with 1000 of us to look after.

Then in my next PE lesson the head suddenly appeared very discreetly, one time looking through a glass door before I caught his eye contact, he realised it, came in and watched for a while. Nobody else paid him much attention but I knew why he was there. I was impressed he even knew when my next lesson like that was. Half the boys were without tops, me included, two separate team games were taking place. He watched mine, some basketball. He began clapping, I looked, he winked at me and turned around and left.

Showering was an absolute nightmare. I remember constant attempts to get out without one, sometimes more successful than others. That wasn't unique, a lot of us were at that one trying all the tricks to avoid them. There was this day when upwards of a quarter of the guys in PE got given what became known as the - nude walk of shame - as we got a massive bawling out and sent to get showers thinking we'd got away without one.

When I got to the final year in school suddenly showering completely ended, the teachers didn't ask us to take them after PE anymore, unless anyone actually asked to do so. A couple did now and again and had them almost to themselves. We even kept our tops on the whole time in PE as well. Still did the same kind and amount of PE as before but seemed like we suddenly got treated more adult like, which just raised further points in my mind such as if it could be like that in my final year in school why couldn't it have been the same in all the others.

Back in 1999 I went on a stag weekend of a friend with a group of eight other twenty & thirty somethings to Ibiza, I think most if not all got their tops off on the brief beach visit we managed that weekend but I kept a couple of trendy tops on and nobody said a word to me, but I was thinking about it quite a lot and remembering school days on that outing.

None of the school issues I've outlined have ever affected my own two children, neither have been confronted with them, a 16 and a 19 year old.

Hello, Tommy and Andy.

For you or anyone interested, to search Historyworld for a particular word or phrase, you can enter it, followed by a space and site:historyworld.co.uk into Google's search box. (If you put quotation marks round your phrase, this narrows results further).

Doing this brings up a list of occurrences of the word or phrase anywhere on historyworld.co.uk, so you can quickly find if a particular subject is mentioned. Entering site: then the website name into Google works to search any website.

With sites that change rapidly, it may help to click on the three dots by the entry you want in the Google search results, then click on "Cached". This brings up a slightly older version of the relevant web page, showing it as it was a few days or weeks previously when Google indexed the page.

Hope this is helpful.

Did a heap of swimming and gym shirtless in school.

Definitely felt different out of the water shirtless on the gym floor compared to in the pool. Unsure why, the pool was never a concern to me in any way but often fancied having a shirt doing gym when I wasn't allowed to. I didn't think of myself as shirtless phobic at all by the way, but undeniably rather a lot seem to have been.

Thanks Andy.
It seems that all that most posters want to talk about here is whether one should do PE with tops on or tops off.
And it takes thousands of repetitive posts to keep repeating the same things.
Other topics to do with school life, including in connection with PE such as I mentioned seem to be out of the question.
I am sure that many boys were given corporal punishment by PE coaches during the lessons. But this seems to be irrelevant or a taboo subject.
I am sure that if I come back here in a year's time after more hundreds of posts out of curiosity these posters would still be talking exclusively about whether to wear tops or not for PE.
Amusing really.

I do not understand why there is such an problem about males be they adults or children going topless it happens all the time when they go swimming.

I agree with Jay.

Nothing wrong with the lesson as shown in the B&W photo accompanying the chat here.

Boys of all school ages should turn out for the school gym in their bare chests for a PE class even today. It should be a compulsory requirement and no argument about it. Simplicity is one thing but also I think it would inspire confidence in the medium to long term and probably a lot quicker. None of this body shaming or body shyness.

We've now got a whole generation who don't even know what a proper PE lesson looks like, who don't even know what a school shower is, or that it even used to be a thing that had to be taken. Likewise I think school showering should be compulsory after PE classes. A handful of years ago I talked to my grandson who was twelve at the time going to a new school and told him what we used to get up to. When I mentioned that they used to line us up with nothing on and walk us naked into a big shower at school after PE he looked at me in abject horror and my son, his father reiterated much the same thing for himself and he told us both he thought we were lying! Which begs the question in my own mind about why a modern day twelve year old would think that jumping into the showers with nothing on but a smile with your mates after PE at school would be such an unlikely thing to believe, and the same goes for the no tops rule in PE class too. Going by the reaction my grandson had to me just talking about it for a moment in passing I can only dare to think just what his reaction would have been in school if genuinely confronted with being told he had to go in the showers or take a lesson without a top. I'm convinced he would have had a nervous breakdown on the spot and so would many others due to the way they've been socially conditioned nowadays to think about things.

I quite enjoyed the read about Nick's naughty teacher allowing him a naked swimming session. Nowadays that teacher would likely be fired on the spot, charged with some kind of trumped up offence and slung on an offenders register.

Tommy has raised a valid point about school days and yet people are out to shut it down, harks back to the Alan days. If you don't want to contribute you don't need to but as this site isn't indexed in any way there is no way to find things without trawling through hundreds if not thousands of pages.

Cut Tommy some slack gentlemen.

I haven't read all 4,000 posts on this endless discussion.
I will probably have to go several hundred posts to find the discussion on this subject several months ago.
But I will try if I get the time.
Talking about endless repetitions I am amazed that a subject like PE in schools would take thousands of posts and still going on after several years of non-stop discussion and repetitions.

Replying to Jay,

I agree with you 100%.

Plenty of corporal punishment comment on here, too much of the same infact, can't think what Tommy has been looking at to miss it.

Like Iain says, the subject has been done plenty on here and involved some rather feisty exchanges not too long ago. For me there is only so much you can say on the matter before it becomes quite repetitive, but it's all there for reading further back.

Boys simply don't need anything else for PE. Low cost and practical what more do you want.

Comment by Tommy - "Something that seems to be missing in this long discussion about school days in our time and which was normal and common in most schools is corporal punishment."


Are you kidding Tommy. Have a look through many of the comments during last August, just three months ago, there was a right old ding-dong going on about corporal punishment in school, and in particular one specific school from the past, Litherland in Liverpool in 1981. I placed a link to Hansard at the time discussing it in Parliament. There has been a huge amount if you've missed it and wish to browse recent months.

I hope that's helpful.

Something that seems to be missing in this long discussion about school days in our time and which was normal and common in most schools is corporal punishment.

Not a pleasant subject, I know, but it was part of school life when I was at school in the 60s. I can't count the number of times I was given the slipper or the ruler especially in late primary school.
Some teachers were really brutal and would give us cp for any little thing, even just for talking in class.
The punishments were always given in front of class. You would be called up to the teacher's desk, bend over it and get a few whacks.
The headmaster was never involved unless it was something serious that involved the whole school. like vandalism on school property.
I would like to hear others about their experience of corporal punishment at their school in those days.

Just wish to make it clear I've posted a few comments on here in the past few months but I am not the same John who has asked these questions to Aiden these past couple of days incase there is any confusion.

Aidan,
We did PE stripped to the waist and there was a strict no underwear rule, so like you the underpants came off in the changing room and we had compulsory naked communal showers. I never experienced naked swimming at school but did go skinny dipping with friends in summer. At an all boys school I can’t see why nude swimming should be an issue. If your parents are supportive and prepare you in advance I think that it usually takes away irrational fears.

Our school had its own modest sized learner pool outside. There was no deep end, the whole thing seemed to be about four or five feet deep throughout. Standing in it it came to upper chest height for normal sized kids of twelve. Lessons were mixed genders. I remember we often got encouraged to wear goggles in the pool which often steamed up. Obviously boys wore our swimming trunks, the old style close fitting firm things. Girls an all in one outfit, leotard style. We used it from March to October. We'd use it for swimming in school time and for out of hours practice as part of a club, often single sex, so in my case boys only.

It was at one of these out of school practices on a Saturday morning that I ended up swimming naked with everyone else because our male teacher actually allowed us to do it for a lark and everybody joined in. I think there were about a dozen or so of us, maybe fifteen. It was in July of 1980. It was great fun and we chose to do it and were not stopped. But we should have been because although it was Saturday we were on school premises under a school teacher supervision. One of the lads with us that morning told his parents what we'd done, it spread like wildfire and before we knew it our teacher was in big trouble at school by Monday and the talk was about what we'd all got up to in the pool that Saturday morning. I think he got a warning and a slap on the wrist for it, nothing more for allowing us to swim naked like that. He definitely didn't have any ulterior motives for allowing us to do that, that I ever noticed, genuinely straightforward just having some fun. It was a shame, the sensation of swimming completely naked was incredibly different just for removing one small item. Unless you've done it then it's hard to describe the feeling if immense freedom and how natural it felt. Obviously it began as something a bit daring to do as we knew it wasn't really allowed, but everyone wanted to try and chose to get naked without inhibitions. Obviously if you went to a school that forced you to swim naked if you didn't want to it would be quite distressing for some, I get that, but I found it a hugely enjoyable and positive 90 minutes or so when I did it, the only time I ever got the chance even though it should not have been allowed.

John on 17th November 2022 at 19:17

I don't remember being bothered by it. At boarding school we slept in open dormitories and showered in open showers so we all saw each other naked often enough. When we changed for sports, underpants had to come off so swimming naked was not really much different. I guess you get used to anything after a while.

I knew in advance about it all because my brother who was seven years older than me and had been to the same school had told me about it. At prep school we didn't have a pool so swimming never happened and there wasn't anything to compare it with except going to the nearby pool at home which of course was mixed so trunks were worn but certainly for men and boys there was a big open changing room there so again, naked was normal.

Did you ever experience naked swimming?

Aidan,
Were you bothered about having to swim naked at school?. What did your parents think about the swimming policy of no swimwear allowed?.

Hi,

P.E lessons for boys and girls are separated and the girls wear their usual P.E uniforms. However, they can see us when we change into our P.E attire in class or when we are doing P.E outdors. I would like to post a picture of a P.E lesson from my school but I dont think you can do so on this site.

Yee, did you share your lessons with girls? If you were made to be shirtless around girls, how did they behave? What did they wear?

Howard on 12th November 2022 at 21:36

Boy' boarding school starting in 1967, the school had its own pool and we swam naked throughout my time there. I think trunks were optional from about 1982 but I believe it was then junior boys who wore them as seniors were just used to naked swimming, it's perfectly natural!

A very interesting, long and nostalgic discussion about school PE going back several years.
But what I found most interesting and controversial was the custom in some schools that had nude swimming for boys in some schools as several posters described way back.
How common was this custom in schools?
Did anyone here actually experience it?

Tanya

I'm still there. I'm studying in high school now. I graduated from my middle school there 2 years ago. Schools are usually 7:30 to 4 evening.

No we dont need to shower in school.

To Alan, 11th November.

School PE showering from the word go, at five, sounds reasonable BUT, costs are involved, plus PE at those ages is far more limited in scope and young bodies don't tend to do all the things that pubescent teens do such as excessive sweat and hormones. Thus why only a minority of middle schools enacted such measures. I do agree with you that there has always been that element of school showering trepidation for many and that would be eliminated to a large extent if it was something always undertaken. But even then I still think the same issues would evolve later on as all those teen fears and changes take hold and younger childhood innocence gets left behind. I think the system got it just about right although it could feel somewhat brutal if you were highly prone to being self critical, self conscious (shy/bashful) or lacking self esteem. I certainly do not agree with some people who think there is something wrong with people who wish to avoid nudity or even just shirtlessness among others. It all seems part of the full spectrum from one end to the other of who we all are.

I do have to laugh at the continuing stream of males coming on here telling us how scared they were to show a bit of skin in PE up top.

You looked just fine guys, honest. I loved the chance to do it like that. Can anyone explain the essence of the problem with it. Shy doesn't cut it for me. Some while back I saw a couple of naturists talking on some lifestyle programme, both nude but vitals covered and nearly choked on my coffee when the lady said she was shy. Yeah right.

If some law was suddenly enacted which said all PE in the school gym had to be barechested for boys from 5 to 18 I don't reckon it would do any harm at all and would probably have a highly positive impact overall.

The others are right, I never did cross country running at school, ever. That was left to the boys. It seems like one of those stereotypes schools are fond of with types of sport activity between what the sexes are allowed to do, and I wasn't at school quite as far back as some of you on here as I said on a previous comment.

Yee, you've caught my eye, so are you currently in Taiwan? What year did you leave school? How long is the school day over there exactly, I think of it as longer than in British schools. You mentioned a culture of shirtless PE and not liking it, is there a culture of full showering too and what was your attitude to that? I've heard in the far east that public communal bathing is culturally popular with many people.

John

If it was optional, me and a lot of my classmates would definitely have chosen to wear a shirt. We never got to prefer it but we just got used to it as there as nothing we can do about it.

Apologies Yee,

My last comment should have been addressed to you. Not sure how I managed that. John